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Here is New York City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, a “poet laureate” whose words were caught on tape and typed into a 28-page indictment.

“That’s politics. That’s politics, it’s all about how much. Not about whether or will, it’s about how much, and that’s our politicians in New York, they’re all like that. All like that. And they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else. You can’t do anything without the (expletive) money.”

Note the meter, the repetition and the final pronouncement hammered home with a curse that everybody knows but will never see printed in a family newspaper. Somebody in the FBI has a good ear for larceny.

Halloran is one of the six public officials implicated in a complex bribery scheme allegedly designed to secure the New York City GOP mayoral nomination for state Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Democrat from Queens who long has been suspected of being a crook. Smith acknowledged it himself when he told City & State back in July, “People think that I’m a crook and a thief — and I’m absolutely not.”

Now he can tell it to a judge.

According to the feds, Smith was buying the ballot position in an unholy partnership with Bronx County Chairman Jay Savino and Queens County Vice Chairman Vincent Tabone. Judging from the vast field of lackluster mayoral candidates and the fact that the Republican candidate has won the past five mayoral elections, Smith might have had a chance.

Also entwined in the bribe plot were Spring Valley Mayor Noramie F. Jasmin and her deputy, Joseph A. Desmaret, a couple of sorry dumbbells who it seems were playing way above their heads. You know things are really getting bad when Albany’s slimy tentacles reach into the poorest villages where the amateurs live.

Judging which state is the most corrupt has become an academic parlor game in recent years. Thanks to the larcenous yearnings of those who manage to rise to power in states like Illinois, Florida and New Jersey, the competition is stiff, but this latest scandal with Malcolm Smith et al. should give New York a decided bump in the standings.

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However you gauge corruption, using the raw metric of convictions puts New York in first place.

A study by the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government and Public Affairs found New York had 2,522 federal public-corruption convictions from 1976 to 2010, California came in a close second with 2,345 convictions, followed by Illinois with 1,828. Since that report came out, the Empire State has produced a fresh crop of convictions: namely for state Sens. Vincent Leibell, Shirley Huntley, Pedro Espada, Carl Kruger and Nick Spano. And so the beat goes on.

Not long ago, the Center for Public Integrity issued “Corruption Risk” report cards to all 50 states based on 14 categories. Eight states received an “F” grade; amazingly New York was not one of them. New York got an overall grade of “D,” but failed in four categories: redistricting, state pension fund management, state budget process and ethics enforcement.

It could be worse. As a jaded political insider once observed, at least New York hasn’t suffered the ignominy of seeing a governor actually go to jail, though Eliot Spitzer resigned after being exposed for patronizing a prostitute and David Paterson paid a fine for squeezing free World Series tickets out of the Yankees.

After he took office, Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged how bad things really were.

“Sometimes, the corruption in Albany would even make Boss Tweed blush,” he said.

To change the culture, Cuomo backed a set of ethics reforms, which were passed by the Legislature in summer 2011. They included a provision that makes it possible to strip pension benefits from public officials convicted of a felony.

But don’t get too excited over this. Should Malcolm Smith get convicted, he won’t lose his benefits. The law applies only to those appointed or elected after the law was enacted.

And get this: According to New York Public Interest Research Group, of the 213 senators and Assembly members who were sworn into office this year, no more than six were non-incumbents.

In other words, we generally vote the rascals in.

It’s an old line from the comic strip character Pogo, but it still applies: We have met the enemy, and he is us.